Yesterday on the way home from work I stopped on the bustling North Williams Avenue bikeway. The images below are just a sampling of what I saw in about 15 minutes. Not surprisingly, I noticed a lot of people riding quite fast. This location was actually one of the more difficult ones to photograph because I had to pan and focus much more quickly than other places. I think people’s high speeds have something to do with the design of the street. Riding on Williams can feel hectic and stressful because of the narrow bike lane, the door zone, and all the fast car and bike traffic swooping by.

With the rain pouring down right now, I also thought these images would be fun to share as they might be the last time we’ll see dry and sunny streets for a while. Check the out below, and I even included a little bonus for your dog lovers 😉 …

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55 Comments

JoeOctober 12, 2012 at 3:38 pm

ha, dude with a cig in his mouth.. awesome! love that almost everyone smiling while riding dont get that with cars.

I like backpacks because I don’t have to carry a pannier in my hand once at my destination, and because I can choose among any of my bikes without having to put a rack on them all. Once when my commute was 12 miles each way, I set myself up with a rack and panniers. Otherwise backpacks work just fine.

I could see that being the case for many, so due to my already messed up shoulders I consider myself fortunate that heavy weight in my single pannier in the rear doesn’t affect my handling enough to even make it a slight annoyance for me.

Thanks for another great people on bikes!
3 How can you ride like that with the drops and brakes facing that way, ouch. Looks very happy though.
6 eating dude, needs some air in those tires, wont talk about the angle of the rack 😉
15 Think is my favorite. The doggie in back looks happy and the look on the guys face looks like he is making and engine sound.

???? What the heck? On some of them how can you even tell? Seriously, just for the sake of argument what is egregiously wrong with the bike fit on #s 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 13, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 28, 30 and 32 ??? By my count roughly half look like reasonable fits – especially allowing personal preference and for riding style

#25 hand and foot cranked bike is owned – and ridden there – by Jane. Pretty sure the cranks are synchronized, that is, not independently rotatable.
These are incredibly difficult to ride. Note the steering pivot just under the front of the seat, connecting rear green and front yellow frames. Every time you apply any power input it affects the steering, such that you must learn to counter this effect in your pedal and arm strokes … good luck with that … yet people do that – and unicycles – all the time.
Hard to tell from the photo, but I think she’s rocking a Rohloff here.

There is an interesting predecessor to this design – the ‘manuped’. Twas designed and patented in the 70’s, I think in the Eugene area. One big difference is that the manuped had the pedal crank going THROUGH the front wheel hub, but didn’t drive the wheel directly – chain came up from the crank on the left side, drove an intermediate hub [which also rec’d the chain from the hand crank]. This one did have INDEPENDENTLY rotatable cranks – OMG I couldn’t even roll down a hill clutching the hand crank and not pedaling … maybe 3X tougher than Jane’s!
Friend of mine “Manuped Fred” won the world IHPVA speed championships in ’79 and ’80 on one, IIRC.

I think Dave Levy of TiCycles built her this crazy bike. And you thought he just built titanium diamond frames. 😉